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There are people who create myths to misguide others and then make hay. There are myths that get created on their own and people spread them for their gain. AND THEN there are the gullible folk who repent for having believed the myths and taken wrong actions. Bloggers just starting their blogs also fall prey to myth-mongers. So, friends, let's bust the 9 major blogging myths. Our blogging can be successful only when we are clear about the right actions that we need to take. Myth 1. Blogging will make you millionaire within six months. We put it on top of the list because of our long experience with compiling blog directories. We have discovered that thousands of bloggers create blogs with the intention of making quick money and are left frustrated when such money doesn't come by.  Well, there may be stray instances of a smart blogger choosing a paying niche, his tricks paying off and he making a big sum in a short time. But these are exceptions. All others have to wo...

Our purpose is not to scare you with legalese. But it IS our purpose to guide bloggers on legal and ethical aspects of blogging. ATTRIBUTE THE SOURCE When we copy a quotable passage from somebody else's website / blog / presentation / press release etc, we must give due credit to the source. Even more important is to give adequate attribution when using somebody's audio, graphic or audio-visual material. We have discussed it many times in the lat five years, so will leave it at that. Would like to add just this bit: giving credit does not mean you can use any material; we need to abide by copyright laws when using others' content. DISCLOSE ASSOCIATION WITH A BRAND When we, as bloggers, endorse a product or service, we are legally bound to disclose our relationship with the brand and benefits being derived through that association.  Federal Trade Commission of the USA has issued comprehensive guidelines , with examples, on how to disclose promotion of a brand ...

Friends, here we are with our Platinum Rankings for 2014-15.  Platinum is one of the 'noble' metals. It is more stable, corrosion resistant and ductile than gold and silver, the other noble metals. It is rare and expensive too. So are our platinum blogs: stable, full of valuable resources, and not cheap in looks and monetisation. Of course, we cannot compare a blog on economics or book reviews with that on fashion or food, but within their genres each is a topper.  This happens to be the fifth edition of this listing. As in the past, some blogs have lost and some others have entered the list. The listing contains 30 blogs. In addition, there are 7 blogs from blogging platforms of Indian portals (somehow only from hindustantimes, timesofindia this time). These have been listed separately, as on such platforms the blogger does not have control over design and navigation.  We are going to separately list collective blogs in the Directory of best Indian Blogs. ...

Digital divide = the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the Internet, and those who do not. We all have heard about digital divide. Common sense says that there is less usage of internet in developing countries and rural areas as compared to developed countries and urban centres. In addition, unemployed and poor people as well as aged persons are less likely to use internet due to constraints of purchasing power and technological barriers.  But common sense does not give a measurement, so we searched the web to update ourselves and our esteemed readers about the status of internet penetration at global level. We came across a report by ITU  (International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency)  published as recently as 4 days back. Let's see what the data say about the availability and usage of internet. Internet penetration, price and quality According to ITU, there are 3.2 billion internet users in the world (population over 7 bi...

We'd start this social media update with the disturbing trend of rightist trolling in the Indian social scene, and then we'd get you VIP stuff and else. The dissent haters on Indian social media Humans are inhuman by nature. Put a gullible guy before a group of smarties and they would exploit him; put a stranger in a closed community and they would all turn racial; put a vulnerable person among socialising males and tell them whatever they do would never be known, and they might commit the worst possible crime. We the humans hate people who don't follow our religion, traditions and beliefs. We hate them much more when they question any of our silly-looking beliefs. We won't talk about global phenomenon, but in India, we are growing intolerant of even slight dissent. We hate those who do not like even our leader or our political line of thinking. And social media has given us a free tool to throw muck at anybody and as much as we like.  Look at some of the dissen...

When you copy-paste material from other blogs or websites into your own blog, that is not only unethical, but illegal too. Search engines also frown upon it. Unless you help search engines to know that you are quoting something with a good intention, your copy-pasted content might be taken as 'duplicate content' and you may be penalized for plagiarism. There are times when you genuinely need to copy-paste. You may need to illustrate something by showing the original, use the original as an example, quote some important statement... There are ethical ways to quote exact text in your blog and instead of being penali z ed, you will earn goodwill for acting in a transparent manner. Let's tell you how. Wordpress (wordpress.com) as well as Blogger give you the option to quote using the rich text editor as well as by putting the html code. If you are not comfortable with html, you can use the " option to quote a passage. It will be indented when you see this passage...

A good search description  helps in SEO and it also prompts searchers to click on the search result. These  lead to more traffic, especially targeted traffic (Traffic is called targeted traffic when it consists of visitors who are interested in that type of content.)  On another post on this subject I have written more about the importance of description meta tag and how to put it on blogs. In the present posts, let us learn to make a good, useful search description. What is a good description meta tag    Like other forms of meta tags on a website, description meta tag should also be crisp, small. Blogger says, it should not be bigger than 150 characters (including spaces). So, you need to put all that you want to say about the blog / post in this size limit. It should summarise the subject of the post or pick up the most important highlight(s) of the content. It should give facts that the first lines of post will not have. It may also have fa...